


the bite fic

by macaulaytwins



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Mild Gore, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28492506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaulaytwins/pseuds/macaulaytwins
Summary: charles recieves an injury during the bacchanal that requires some diy medical attention.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	the bite fic

**Author's Note:**

> this is charles whump.. im sorry charles. follow me on twitter @macaulaytwins!

It was not until Bunny had sauntered home, and Francis had snuck upstairs to Henry’s room and locked the door behind them that they came to realize something was very wrong.

The three of them had climbed out of the shower in a daze, throbbing headaches from Bunny jeering at them in the doorway, limbs stiff from running miles and miles— and god knows what else.

Henry pulled on his pajamas robotically, offering the twins a matching pair. They obliged, clumsily dressing, Camilla and Charles doing up each other’s buttons like they were sleepy children.

“Charles,” Henry said, academic monotone coming out uncharacteristically hoarse, “You’re still bleeding.”

“Oh?” He replied— he truly hadn’t noticed. He lifted his right arm, which felt heavy and swollen and found it to be bleeding through Henry’s nice silk pajamas.

“Jesus,” he said, gingerly rolling up the sleeve.

Camilla’s eyes widened, although she was still silent. She hadn’t spoken since she’d come to at the lake. Charles got the impression that she couldn’t speak, even if she wanted to.

“My god,” Henry said, taking Charles’s wrist into his hand to get a better look. An inhuman looking bite mark marred his forearm. It looked hot and irritated, the lower impressions gaped and red, “I think you need stitches.”

“Stitches?” Charles scoffed, limply moving his arm away from Henry’s gentle grasp, “How am I supposed to get stitches? Can’t we just wrap it up?”

Camilla leaned forward to asses her brother’s arm, eyebrows knit together in mild concern. She looked up at him and then at Henry.

“We can’t exactly take you to a hospital,” Henry said bluntly.

“A bandaid should do fine, shouldn’t it? Just until tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t advise you to go to the hospital at all. That would be quite a mistake. Can you imagine how easy it would be to link you to what happened tonight?”

Charles frowned, looking to Camilla to search her eyes for signs of protest. Any other time, he was certain Henry’s suggestion would’ve perturbed her, but her gray eyes, a reflection of his own, remained calm and impassive.

“So, what am I supposed to do, then?” His arm was still bleeding, dripping onto the wooden floor now at a reasonably steady pace. Although he didn’t have a complete awareness of his body back yet, he could feel the hot sting of what would become pain, although he didn’t know when.

“Francis has a fairly extensive first aid kit. It should have a sterile needle and thread, or at least alcohol.”

“What? You can’t be serious, Henry—“

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

Charles shut his mouth, a cold feeling washing over him. After everything he’d done tonight– even with the finer details slipping away as quickly as he’d recalled them, the last thing he wanted was Henry sewing up his arm. He could hardly bear the thought.

Camilla, undoubtedly noting the slight panic in his eyes, set a warm hand on his shoulder, guiding him out of the spare bedroom and into the kitchen, helping him to sit down at the table. Charles did not notice the way that she and Henry locked eyes over his shoulder.

As if taking a queue, Henry turned on his heel and walked off, presumably to find the first aid kit.

Charles stared down at the tabletop, willing himself not to look at his arm, but it was an impulse he could not control. His eyes quickly found the flesh, which was more ripped than cut, raw edges tapering against each other in a way that made his head spin. He had never really been seriously injured, except for a time that he fell out of a tree as a child. He remembered the rush of falling. The spinning sky. The cast he wore on his left wrist for several weeks. Camilla had been angry she did not have one to match and took to fastening her own with towels and duct tape. They had always matched, back then.

Camilla watched now, as Charles assessed his arm, still relaxed, undisturbed, and silent. Although both he and Francis had each taken care to wash her hair thoroughly, he could see a strand towards the back of her head with a telltale hint of rust.

“Milly,” he said, feeling quite weary all of a sudden– as if he were delivering his last wishes to her, “I don’t want Henry sewing up my arm. I really don’t.”

Camilla frowned, her pink bottom lip jutting out slightly in that familiar way. He could see a red speck where she had bitten herself.

“Can’t we call Richard? He’s a doctor or something, isn’t he? Or you… won’t you do it? Henry’s going to make it worse, I just know it,” He felt somewhat frantic, “Don’t let him do it, alright?”

He did not know if this concern was entirely rational. Nothing they had done that night had been rational. It was all instinctual. He had an instinct that Henry would do him more harm than good. It disquieted him that Camilla did not seem to have the same sense.

Her eyebrows were furrowed, and she reached forward, taking his hand in her own. Gently, she clasped his right hand in both of her small ones, pulling his injured arm towards her. Deliberately, she extended her index finger and pressed it into the open flesh. Charles winced, but he didn’t pull away. Her fingertip was bloody when she drew it back towards herself.

As Henry returned to the kitchen, Camilla silently slid her finger across her forehead, streaking it red.

“Here,” He said, with all the seriousness of a divorce lawyer, setting a leather bag in the middle of the kitchen table.

“This looks like it’s from the Civil War, Henry.” Charles protested, secretly hoping that perhaps Francis would wake up from his slumber upstairs and talk some sense into everyone, although it seemed unlikely.

“That would be inaccurate. Everything is new,” he took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, alcohol wipes, and to Charles’s horror, a needle shaped like a fishhook wrapped in medical plastic.

“Where did you get all of this?” Henry pursed his lips in a way that implied he disapproved of the manner things were procured.

“The infirmary. Francis’s idea. Although we certainly could have just purchased them from a medical supply store.” Charles did not care very much for semantics at this time.

“Hey, Henry, I’ve actually got an idea; why don’t we call Richard to take a look at it? Didn’t he go to medical school? He might be able to do a better job, don’t you think?”

“I thought we agreed not to bring Richard into this,” Henry replied sharply.

“We could… say it was an accident or something. Like, when we hit the deer?” Charles was grasping at straws, well aware this was an unlikely method of persuasion. Although he was typically quite deft at persuasion, he was not typically deft at persuading Henry.

“Don’t be ridiculous. That hardly convinced Bunny, and you want to bring Richard in, as well? Be rational.” Henry was unscrewing the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, his big fingers clumsy with the small container. He was tired. Charles cringed at the thought of him working clumsily on his arm, which had begun to throb.

“Jesus christ, Henry, I just really don’t think I want you to–”

“Lower your voice.”

Charles, who had almost been on the verge of tears, was immediately quieted by Henry’s stern reprimand. He lowered his eyes, cheeks burning, wondering if the chills he felt were from panic or from the way the feeling was rapidly coming back into his limbs. The sharp awareness that he would be able to acutely feel the needle running in and out of him, the thread moving through him. Whatever they were going to do, it had to be done fast.

“Just pour me a drink, would you?” Henry sighed, but complied, moving steadily to the kitchen cabinet where he withdrew a bottle of scotch and a used glass from the sink.

Charles didn’t even know if he’d be able to keep anything down, but he did not want to have his senses so keenly raw.

Henry handed him the drink. Charles swallowed it in one gulp, wiping his mouth with the back of his good hand.

“Camilla should do it.” He said, his throat raw and burning.

Henry sighed, assessing the way Camilla sat at the table, eyes almost owlishly wide, a silent watcher over the events.

“Fine.” He thought her capable of anything. Of course, she would be capable of this.

Camilla was still for a moment. She took a steady breath before reaching out and picking up the small, wrapped needle and a similarly sterile package of nylon suture thread. She wiped off her hands with the packet of alcohol wipes and then took the peroxide from Henry. She paused momentarily, looking up at Charles as if to ask for permission. He swallowed hard and then gave a quick nod, resigning himself to whatever would come next.

Without much preamble, she poured the peroxide onto Charles’s arm.

Charles threw his good arm across his face as if he might sneeze, but instead, he let out a muffled cry, going red up to his ears. The peroxide made an audible sizzle as it ran across his flesh, foaming up instantaneously.

Camilla’s face was reactionless, still as marble. She continued her work, threading the needle delicately.

She had taken home-economics classes in high school. It wasn’t her strong suit, but she had sewn her grandmother an apron as one of her more successful assignments. Somehow, this didn’t seem all that different.

Henry poured himself his own drink before sitting down beside them, his expression unreadable but similarly calm.

Neatly, Camilla began to sew.

At the first breach of Charles’s flesh, he instinctively tried to jerk his arm away.

Henry, as if he had been waiting for something of the sort to happen, reached forward to hold down his arm with an iron grip.

“Stay still,” he warned, locking eyes with Charles’s own, which were red and tearful, “it could be worse if you don’t.” he supplied as an explanation if only so Charles would not mistake his firmness for cruelty. However, the two may have blended somewhat, accidentally.

“Sorry, sorry,” Charles said when he caught his breath, voice hoarse.

He meant this mostly as an aside to Camilla, although she seemed unbothered by the situation, just patiently waiting for him to still so that she could continue, which she did. Charles tried not to cry or yell, keeping his face hidden in the crook of his elbow, mouth covered firmly by the silk of Henry’s pajamas. It was miserable work. He was in a cold sweat, stomach turning, hardly able to glance at what Camilla was doing.

What Camilla found– something that the boys had recently discovered– was that flesh was tougher to push through than one would think.

She had gone hunting with her uncle on the rare occasion she had been allowed to tag along ( _she always wished it was her who got to go instead of Charles, who cried every time he killed a rabbit. It was easier for her to handle the flesh and blood. Everyone had always underestimated her tolerance for the visceral_ ). Her brother’s skin fought the needle, unlike the raw deer meat she had cut up with her hunting knife. The flesh that had slid through like butter, that she had pulled off the bone with her bare hands.

Unlike the apron that she had sewn for her grandmother, the corners of Charles’s flesh were not perfect. Whatever had bitten him had likely taken some of him with it: thusly, Camilla’s stitches were not perfect either. They were at irregular intervals, the thread torn through with her teeth, as she did not have any scissors. Henry watched this with barely concealed interest, sipping at his drink, no longer bothering to hold Charles’s arm, as he seemed to have gone into a state of mild shock and sat eerily still, except to tremble.

“There,” Henry said when the work was completed. Camilla’s hands were bloody. Charles shook, eyes staring blankly ahead, “Marvelous job, Camilla.”

She smiled just barely, meeting Henry’s eyes almost sheepishly as if she had just finished a project that she was reluctant to accept praise for.

Henry wrapped Charles’s arm with gauze and cotton, securing it with a butterfly clip. It was messy, but they had done their best to keep things clean. He hoped that Charles would not need any sort of antibiotics, although he figured they would be able to lie without much trouble to acquire them.

Charles took a shuddering breath, looking pale and sweaty. He reached up with his unbandaged arm to wipe at his brow, hand tremoring.

“Yes,” He agreed, finally, although his voice came out thick and queasy, “She was marvelous, wasn’t she?”

They didn’t say another word to each other before they filed into the spare room, collapsed onto the pull-out couch, and fell asleep.


End file.
